CRM Online and Click Dimensions

Are you aware that Click Dimensions applied to Dynamics CRM online is instance specific?

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Click Dimensions

Many companies now use Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Click Dimensions to manage and monitor their marketing campaigns. As Office 365 offers the ability for customers to purchase multiple instances for their tenant (production and sandbox instances) it’s become a lot easier now to have multiple environments for development, testing and production all in the cloud. However, if you are a customer with multiple CRM instances who plans to evaluate Click Dimensions, you will need to order a Click Dimensions solution for each of your CRM online instances (at the time of writing this post).

For example, if you have one production and two sandbox instances, when ordering the Click Dimensions trial you will need to order a total of three Click Dimensions solutions (one for each instance). The reason is because once installed, Click Dimensions embeds an unique Click Dimensions accountKey specific to the unique CRM orgName of your CRM online instance.

Let’s take a closer look…

Requesting a Click Dimensions Solution for your CRM online instance

When you contact Click Dimensions for a trial solution of their product for a CRM online instance, you will need to provide 2 pieces of information:

The “Organization Unique Name” of your CRM instance, which can be found in CRM’s Settings > Customizations > Developer Resources.

Once you contacted Click Dimensions for a Click Dimensions solution trial, you will need to wait up to 48 hours for them to send you an email similar to the one below based on the CRM online instance URL you provided during sign up.

Downloading from the link provided in the email yields a simple “ClickDimensions.zip” CRM managed solution file which you can import into your specific CRM online instance.

Once imported you will see a new tab called “ClickDimensions Settings” under Settings, which contains the configuration area that will enable you to modify settings used by Click Dimensions. Look closely and you’ll see an “Account Key” that is generated for this specific CRM online instance.

What happens if you install the wrong Click Dimensions solution to your CRM online instance?

What you will see in the meantime is simply an error message when you tried to browse to the Settings > ClickDimensions Settings area in CRM:

“Wrong orgname value. Please contact ClickDimensions support.“

How does a Click Dimensions solution affect a CRM sitemap solution?

Let’s assume you have two CRM online instances, one for DEV (source instance) and one for TEST (destination instance). Both instances have valid Click Dimensions solutions installed and are working fine.

In the source CRM instance you modify the CRM sitemap, store this in a solution container and export. You then import this sitemap solution into your destination CRM instance.

O-oh! Browsing to the ClickDimensions Settings area in the TEST instance shows the same “wrong orgname error”! What?!

This is because once a Click Dimensions solution is installed in a CRM environment, the sitemap is automatically modified to include the new section “ClickDimensions Settings”, which contains the unique Click Dimensions “accountKey”. If the “accountKey” value in the sitemap solution (i.e. accountKey from DEV CRM instance) does not match the accountKey tied to your destination CRM instance (i.e. accountKey from TEST CRM instance), you will see the “orgname error”.

So what do we do?

In your sitemap solution from the DEV CRM instance, simply open the “customization.xml” file from CRM. Search for the “accountKey” associated with your source CRM online instance. Once found, replace this value with the “accountKey” associated with your destination CRM online instance. Update the xml file back into the CRM sitemap solution, and import this into the destination CRM instance.

To carry out the above you need to know the accountKey for your destination CRM instance. In CRM this accountKey is shown in “ClickDimensions Settings” area. However if you encounter the “wrong orgname” error you will not be able to see this accountKey displayed.

But! Not all is lost! You have two ways to find this accountKey for any CRM online instance where Click Dimensions is installed.

One way is to contact Click Dimensions support. The support team is very responsive and helpful and if you provide the CRM instance URL you are struggling with, they will locate the accountKey for you.

Another way is if you have a copy of the original Click Dimensions solution specific to the CRM online instance you are struggling with, simple open the zip file and pull out the “customization.xml”. Search for “accountKey” and you will see the unique Click Dimensions accountKey in the file associated with the destination CRM instance.

Setting this accountKey value in your sitemap solution and importing once again to the destination

CRM instance will resolve the error. Just don’t forget to publish once imported and refresh your browser.

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One thought on “CRM Online and Click Dimensions”

It’s probably worth mentioning, when you order additional CD instances that correlate with your CRM instances, you can elect to make the additional instances non-production. This then means that the new CD instances are significantly cheaper than buying production instances for each CRM instance.